Building Best-in-Class Capabilities for Medical Affairs: Budget and Staffing Benchmarks

STUDY OVERVIEW

An evolving regulatory landscape has pushed organizations to recognize that a robust Medical Affairs function can help them address challenges and expand efforts in clinical development, market education, and regulatory compliance. Certainly two factors that have a large impact on Medical Affairs groups' effectiveness across these activities are its budget and staffing. 

This Best Practices, LLC study explores how U.S. and global biopharmaceutical companies are allocating their budget and FTEs. The study reviews how Medical Affairs budgets are allocated across different segments to give leaders insights into how they are spending their budget dollars. In addition, the study examines FTE allocations across the functions within Medical Affairs to provide insights into where organizations - and different segments - are emphasizing their focus, in terms of staffing. The study also looks at outsourcing levels and anticipated future staffing changes. Pharmaceutical, biotech and medical device managers and executives will be able to use this research to determine how their Medical Affairs organizations' budgets and staffing compare with industry benchmarks.

The study includes four segments: a mature markets segment from 2012 and 2009, a pharma segment, medical device segment, and an emerging market segment.

KEY TOPICS

• Spend Allocations
• Staffing Allocations

• Show percentage of Medical Affairs spend allocated to different functions/activities
• Show percentage of total Medical Affairs FTEs staffed to different functions
• Show percentage of total Medical Affairs spending allocated for vendors
• Show percentage change in budget and FTE resource levels between the past and current year and between the current year and next year
• Key reasons for increases/decreases in FTEs

• Staffing Increasing, but at Tempered Pace:  Although nearly half of the benchmark class indicated that their Medical Affairs staffing is growing, another 44% indicated that their headcount would remain flat. From 2008 to 2009, 59% of the mature markets class indicated FTE levels were increasing, with 35% noting it was growing  by greater than 35%. There is drop off in the increase of device staffing from 2012 to 2013. Although 60% of the segment indicated increased headcount in 2012, only 20% said that this growth would continue to increase. On the other hand, the pharma segment overall expects more growth in 2013.
• Increased MA Resourcing Driven by: Emphasis on Outcomes, Change in Focus, and Increase in Products: Executives revealed that there are increasing resources mainly due to the growth of their companies and the expansion of their Medical Affairs functions. In addition, internal changes, mainly more of a focus on MSLs and Outcomes, have driven organizations in investing more into the Medical Affairs function. As more focus is placed on Medical Affairs, headcount and spend should increase accordingly.
  

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